Breaking the Bank

My tips for saving money -- budget less.

In these trying economic times, you’re probably looking for ways to manage your household finances. Personally, the way I handle my finances is as follows: I try not to think about them. Once in a while, my wife gets it into her head that we have to sit down and come up with a budget. “We have to make a budget,” she says. “Uh huh,” I say. Then I don’t mention anything about it for a while, and hope she forgets.

Where on EARTH does all of my money go?

And my philosophy is true, to some extent. What happens when you try to think about saving money? You open up a magazine and read a whole list of tips on, let’s say, saving money on your heating bill. And then, following this advice, you buy new windows and drapes and re-insulate your home and buy a big wool hat for your hot water heater. And then your first credit card bill comes, and you realize that you spent more money that first month trying to save money than you did all of the other months when you were spending money. So the next month, instead of sitting back and enjoying the lower heating bill, you feel guilty about how much you spent, and you read another article that says that you can save money on gas for your car if you replaced all of the parts except for the Green bumper sticker. And so on.

But I’m starting to get the idea, based on the fact that you’ve made it this far into the article, that you are the type of person who does want to think about finances. So here’s some advice:

The first step in managing your household finances is to think about where all of your money goes. The way to do this is to sit down at the kitchen table, put your head in your hands, and say, “Where on EARTH does all of my money go?” You should probably make a list. When you’re done with that, you can make yourself feel better by making a list of all of your income. Your income is any money that you make at your job that both the government and your kids’ school see when they look at your tax return, so good luck getting any of that for yourself. You’re better off focusing on your solid assets, as follows:

-Pennies underneath furniture: $65.00

-Actual market value of furniture if you ever decided to sell it at a garage sale: $9.00

-Letters informing you that you may already have won a million dollars: 6

Once you have your two lists, compare the totals. If your income is greater than your expenses, great! But if your expenses are greater, then maybe you should start looking at your day to day expenses for things to cut out, such as newspaper subscriptions.

No, wait, scratch that. You should definitely buy newspapers. Lots of them. At least five or six copies of each. There are so many different uses for newspapers that reading the news is just a side benefit.

Okay, so most of the uses involve wrapping things. For instance, people use them to wrap pots before Shabbos, shelves before Pesach, all of their worldly belongings before they move -- some people even use them to wrap presents, because nothing says: “Look! I bought your present at the dollar store!” like wrapping it in, say, the Help Wanted section. Or a wedding gift in the Mazel Tov section. Or a housewarming gift in the Real Estate section. Also, if you stack your unread newspapers near the front door, you can use them as furniture.

Another way you can keep your budget down is by keeping on top of your food costs. For starters, you can clip coupons. My wife and I clip coupons, which we put in a little folder in our dining room, and we save no money at all, because sadly we don’t take our dining room with us when we go shopping. Also, it’s not always worth holding up a grocery line until you find your coupon. When we were growing up, the average coupon would save us, say, $1 on a $2 item. Nowadays that same item is $4, and the coupon saves us 75 cents when we buy six.

And then there’s utility bills. Most experts say that you can reduce your electric bill by keeping your refrigerator full, so that the foods keep each other cold. If you have no food in the fridge, you can fill it with random-sized bottles of water. That way, when someone comes to your house, you can offer them a drink. “Here, sit down on these old newspapers. Can I offer you some water?”

The problem is that if you’re like most people, you’re going to look at your expenses list and say that there’s nothing to cut down. So the key is to have a friend or neighbor look over the list for you, and you can look over his.

He’ll say: “What? You buy paper plates? They come off more expensive in the long run!”

And you’ll say, “You use regular dishes? Do you also prewash them before you put them in the dishwasher? Once you’re prewashing them, why bother putting them in the dishwasher? How much more water would it take to just wash them completely the first time?”

And he’ll say: “I can’t believe you have a cleaning lady! She comes over once a week and… What? Helps you throw out your paper plates?”

So then you’ll get upset and not talk to each other anymore, and you won’t have to invite each other to parties or exchange gifts, which, if nothing else, will save you money on newspapers. And then you’ll be able to save your hard-earned money for other things, such as putting up a fence.

There. Aren’t you glad you thought about your finances?

Related Articles:

Featured at Aish.com:

About the Author

Mordechai Schmutter writes a weekly humor column for Hamodia, a monthly humorous advice column for The Jewish Press, and a comic strip for The 20s and 30s of Brooklyn. He is also the author of the books, Don’t Yell “Challah” in a Crowded Matzah Bakery, A Clever Title Goes Here, This Side Up, Cholent Mix, and What Is This - Some Kind of Joke? all published by Israel Book Shop. In his spare time, which doesn't exist, he attempts to teach Language Arts to a bunch of high school guys, most of whom are usually too upset that he showed up on any given day to even pay attention to his lessons. He is also available to do stand-up comedy. He lives in New Jersey, but no longer remembers why.

I've been striving to get more into spirituality. But it seems that every time I make some progress, I find myself slipping right back to where I started. I'm getting discouraged and feel like a failure. Can you help?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Spiritual slumps are a natural part of spiritual growth. There is a cycle that people go through when at times they feel closer to God and at times more distant. In the words of the Kabbalists, it is "two steps forward and one step back." So although you feel you are slipping, know that this is a natural process. The main thing is to look at your overall progress (over months or years) and be able to see how far you've come!

This is actually God's ingenious way of motivating us further. The sages compare this to teaching a baby how to walk. When the parent is holding on, the baby shrieks with delight and is under the illusion that he knows how to walk. Yet suddenly, when the parent lets go, the child panics, wobbles and may even fall.

At such times when we feel spiritually "down," that is often because God is letting go, giving us the great gift of independence. In some ways, these are the times when we can actually grow the most. For if we can move ourselves just a little bit forward, we truly acquire a level of sanctity that is ours forever.

Here is a practical tool to help pull you out of the doldrums. The Sefer HaChinuch speaks about a great principle in spiritual growth: "The external awakens the internal." This means that although we may not experience immediate feelings of closeness to God, eventually, by continuing to conduct ourselves in such a manner, this physical behavior will have an impact on our spiritual selves and will help us succeed. (A similar idea is discussed by psychologists who say: "Smile and you will feel happy.")

That is the power of Torah commandments. Even if we may not feel like giving charity or praying at this particular moment, by having a "mitzvah" obligation to do so, we are in a framework to become inspired. At that point we can infuse that act of charity or prayer with all the meaning and lift it can provide. But if we'd wait until being inspired, we might be waiting a very long time.

May the Almighty bless you with the clarity to see your progress, and may you do so with joy.

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it (Rosh Hashanah 4b).

Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.

People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).

The one part of us which is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.

How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!